Ears-On: Apple’s New EarPods Are Worth Listening To

The EarPods, Apple’s new headphones announced alongside the iPhone 5 on Wednesday, rectify nearly every complaint I’ve had with Apple’s white earbuds over the last decade. And while they won’t convert those spending hundreds of dollars on luxurious over-the-ear models, these new in-ear headphones do raise the bar for entry-level audio.

Apple’s original Earbuds are an icon of mobile technology, but not because they actually sound good. It’s because every iPod and iPhone sold since the first iPod landed in 2001 has included a pair of Earbuds. Hundreds of millions have made their way into consumer ears, delivering flat, muddled sound absent of any significant bass. The rounded shape was comfortable enough, but the buds could easily fall out of an ear while you were running, and they did little to block out noise around you.

Not so with the EarPods, which look and sound far better than their predecessors. When the EarPods are in someone else’s ear, you likely won’t even notice there’s anything different. But Apple has changed much from bud to pod. The EarPods have a sleek, retro-futuristic cool that evokes Arne Jacobsen‘s Egg chairs. They’d look at home floating next to Eve, the hovering robot in Wall-E. And the improvements to sound quality are especially striking, especially considering the fact that these are $29 headphones (or free with new iPods and iPhones) with drivers smaller than a dime. The EarPods offer a level of richness and detail that I’d usually associate with mid-range and high-range in-ear headphones such as $100-ish sets from Beats, Aiaiai and Shure.

Apple says its goal with the EarPods was to deliver the experience of “a person sitting in a room listening to high-quality speakers.” The EarPods aren’t quite that good, but they’re close. Distinct instruments and inflections are much clearer now, and there’s been a noticeable boost to the mid-range and bass. This is largely due to all the ports in the EarPods. There are five on each one — a large port on the front of the headphone, which directs sound into the ear canal, and others strategically placed on the sides and further down on the stem. These allow air to flow in and out as the speakers inside work, so that the speakers can move more freely. The result is a bass-producing air chamber that the previous Earbuds didn’t have.

A lot is new in Apple’s EarPods, but the signature white cords are staying in place. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired

For this hands-on, I listened to some Jazz (Sweetnighter by Weather Report and We Insist by Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln), Hip-Hop (The Morning After by the Jivin Scientists and De’Nir by Mestizo), Rock (Escante Calling by Maneja Beto and Coexist by The xx) and Electronica (Metahuman by Eprom and Beams by Matthew Dear). The EarPods handled all of it. I also noticed that the design allows for a comfortable level of isolation. The EarPods aren’t noise-canceling by any means, but they do a good job of blocking out background noise without the discomfort that can come from buds that completely seal off the ear canal.

As with any low-end earbuds, turning up the volume creates distortion and reduces mid-range detail. But I only noticed this when I was playing music with the volume all the way up, which is louder than anyone should be playing music.

Actually, because the EarPods fit so comfortably and securely in the ear, I found that I could get away with lower volume levels than with the original Earbuds. Apple scanned hundreds of ears to try and figure out how to come up with a shape that would fit comfortably for the widest possible range of people. That’s an incredibly tough thing to pull off, given that everyone’s ears are different shapes and sizes, but I found the EarPods to fit superbly for me. I went for a short run with the EarPods in place, and they didn’t slip out or irritate me at all. Wearing the EarPods for a few hours during the work day was also no bother.

I should note that, as comfortable as the EarPods are, they did fit in my right ear a bit more snugly than my left. (Again, no two ears are alike.) However, my colleague Christina Bonnington, who has also been using a set of EarPods for about the last day, said that her experience was the opposite with the left EarPod fitting perfectly and the right sitting more loosely, almost like the old earbuds.

A problem I have with almost every set of in-ear headphones I’ve tried is the suction effect that arises from a piece of rubber sliding into my ear canal. I find this so offensive with some models that I simply can’t stand wearing them for more than a few minutes. But this wasn’t the case with the EarPods. There’s no suction here despite these headphones being, technically, in-ear. This is because the EarPods are made of smooth plastic with no rubber on the earpiece. This also should help keep things clean — no more rubber to collect dirt from your ears or the inside of your laptop bag, purse or coat pocket.

Apple says it spent three years designing its EarPods, with more than 124 different prototypes tested out on more than 600 people. Given how much better the EarPods are than EarBuds, there’s no question that the effort was well worth it.